Read Anthony Fauci's Full Opening Statement to Congress

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), is testifying before Congress on Monday regarding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

Fauci led the response to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020, during which he faced backlash and criticism over mask and vaccine mandates. He retired at the end of 2022 and has been the target of a number of accusations from mostly conservative members of the public that he participated in alleged cover-ups regarding the virus's origins. Most recently, Fauci faced criticism at the end of May after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic reviewed more than 30,000 pages of subpoenaed emails and documents from Dr. David Morens, Fauci's former senior adviser.

The subcommittee, led by Republican Representative Brad Wenstrup, said the emails raised "serious questions as to whether Dr. Fauci took part in a conspiracy amongst the highest levels of [the National Institutes of Health] to hide official records related to the origins of COVID-19."

Morens has already testified before the subcommittee. Fauci's hearing is expected to last until 1 p.m. Newsweek reached out to Wenstrup's office by email for comment.

In a written testimony to the subcommittee, Fauci addressed several accusations made against him in the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including the "disinformation" that he tried to coerce scientists away from the belief that the virus could've been created in a lab and that an NIH-funded grant led to research that created the coronavirus.

The full testimony can be read below:

After a lengthy introduction regarding his personal background Fauci summarizes a phone call between himself and "about a dozen highly regarded virologists" to discuss concerns that the virus had originated in a lab.

"Contrary to the disinformation circulated on social media and elsewhere that I tried to influence the discussion on that call away from a lab leak theory, two participants on that call have verified to this subcommittee that I did not try to steer the discussion in one direction versus another," Fauci wrote. "I am not an evolutionary virologist and would not be qualified to do so in any case. I left the issue of the origin of the virus to the experts on the call."

Later on, Fauci explains that several of the experts on the phone call who first thought the virus could've originated from a lab said there was "no indication that the virus was manipulated and that the most likely scenario was that it emerged as a natural spillover from an animal reservoir, even though they kept an open mind."

Fauci went on to address the "accusation" alleging that he influenced the scientists to change their minds by bribing them with grant money.

"There is no way to answer this accusation except to say that it is preposterous," he said.

Fauci also addressed the "insidious accusation" that an NIH grant that allowed Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) scientists to conduct "surveillance on human serology and bat viruses in the environment in China" led to the creation of the virus that produced the coronavirus pandemic.

"Any qualified evolutionary virologist would confirm that the bat viruses that were studied at WIV under the NIH-funded grant were phylogenetically so far removed from SARS-CoV-2 that it would be molecularly impossible for those viruses to be turned into SARS-CoV-2," Fauci argued.